Yesterday, I spent time with a high school church youth group, talking about moral, ethical sexual decision making and answering their questions about sexuality.There were a number of questions about the information I had presented about consent laws in Connecticut, some questions about was oral sex really risk for transmission of STDS (the answer is yes), but there were even more questions about relationships. Three of the questions asked some version of "how do I know if someone is into me?"
I think what adults often forget is that for many teenagers, romance trumps sexual behaviors. First love is all encompassing; first heartbreak is devastating.
And it's not just teenagers. Last week's Time Magazine (which I just read last night) has a series of articles on love and romance that I highly recommend to you. I think my students yesterday would be surprised that middle age and elder adults still want to know, "how do you know if someone is really into you?" It only gets a little bit easier with experience.
It's not too early to start thinking about Valentine's Day -- or just this wintery Monday. What's something romantic you can do for your partner -- or yourself?
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What's something romantic you can do for your partner -- or yourself?
My new, favorite romantic activity--writing daily love letters to myself from G/god. I find that the more I see myself through G/god's eyes, the more I love myself and hold myself in awe and wonder...and the better able I am to see others through those compassionate eyes as well.
I found this passage particularly striking:
Conceive a child with a person whose MHC is too similar to your own, and the risk increases that the womb will expel the fetus. Find a partner with sufficiently different MHC, and you're likelier to carry a baby to term....Precise as the MHC-detection system is, it can be confounded. One thing that throws us off the scent is the birth-control pill. Women who are on the Pill--which chemically simulates pregnancy--tend to choose wrong in the T-shirt test. When they discontinue the daily hormone dose, the protective smell mechanism kicks back in. "A colleague of mine wonders if the Pill may contribute to divorce," says Wysocki. "Women pick a husband when they're on birth control, then quit to have a baby and realize they've made a mistake."
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